New York comedian Judy Gold is pretty relieved to be here in San Francisco to do "Kung Pao Kosher Comedy" for three nights. "You're my people." She got in trouble at a Howard Dean fund-raiser a couple of weeks ago in Manhattan for saying, at the end of her act, "We've got to get this living, breathing piece of s -- out of office." It was repeated in various media, and she got a lot of hate mail and "a couple of death threats."

Her act is not all political. A lot of it, especially before she had kids, was about being Jewish and having, not coincidentally, a Jewish mom she likes to torture on and offstage. Once when the two of them were out driving, Judy stopped the car outside a local strip joint and said to her mom, "I'll be right back; I just have to pick up my check." She went on Jay Leno and played back the panicked messages her mother left when Judy was out of touch for a few minutes: "Where are you? Are you all right? Well, so long." She tells audiences her mother needs to get laid. "Then I imagine her having sex. 'Could you try not to move a lot? I have vertigo. Can my aide stay in the room in case I need to get up?' "

I reached Ruth Gold, 81, in New Jersey, where she raised Judy and two older siblings. ("Comedians are always the youngest," says Judy.) I learned that Judy was exasperating, not funny, as a child. If she's funny now, Ruth says, "she inherited (it) from me, let's put it that way." Judy Gold says that when she was growing up, every day her mom would say, "When you have kids I hope they turn out just like you."

And it might be coming true.

Gold says that her 7-year-old, Henry, when he is not suggesting jokes that would be good for Gold to use in her act, imitates his grandmother's phone message, saying in a Yiddish accent, "Judith, where are you? I'm a wreck! "

Gold, 41, spoke to us from her small apartment on the Upper West Side, where she was staying with her other son, 2-year-old Ben, while her partner, Sharon Callahan, also 41, took Henry ice skating in Central Park. They've been together almost 19 years. Gold attributes their longevity to a monthly tune-up at the couple counselor's, where "she cries and I apologize." Seven years ago, Sharon had Henry, and then Judy had Ben, and they adopted each other's children.

Gold didn't talk onstage about being gay until she had children. "I didn't want to be known as a gay comic, but as a comic who happens to be gay," Gold says. They are in most ways an ordinary family, trying to raise their two kids in the city. "It's not like Sharon and I wake up and go, 'Hey, we're lesbians. Wow, you're gay and so am I, isn't that incredible? Hey, you're wearing my Birkenstocks, honey!' "

When they met, Judy kept bragging to Sharon that she'd done standup in college at Rutgers University. She got up and told jokes about her dorm mates on a dare, "getting a high unlike any substance I'd ever taken."

It was Sharon who got her to take it up again. Sharon told her to start doing it again or shut up about it. That's when Gold discovered a renewed passion to be in front of a mike. "I went onstage every single night, wherever I could. Open mike, no money, happy hours, hotels, anything. I wanted a lot of stage time." She'd sit at the bar of the Rising Star in New York as a backup in case somebody else didn't show, take funky out-of-town gigs other comedians shunned. "Many comics stay in one city and develop their acts for that particular audience. I wanted to see if I could make people all over the country laugh."

She was "physically ill" the first time she did a club, but now it's not so scary. "At first, it's like when you're a kid: You want approval. Then after 10 or 15 years you know what you're doing, and nothing throws you. Now I feel this is something I know how to do."

She says a female comic needs tenacity and timing, "and you can't be hot looking. Men are not going to listen to you if you are." Even now, whatever else she's doing, she's also doing standup. "When I got a part in "All American Girl," in 1994, I remember thinking, 'Now I have a series, I'm not going to need to do standup, but every night I'd go out afterward and get onstage somewhere.' "

All that practice paid off. These days Gold is all over the tube, hosting HBO's "At the Multiplex With Judy Gold" and appearing regularly on "Hollywood Squares" and Comedy Central's "Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn." She won two Emmys for her work writing and producing for the Rosie O'Donnell show. She acts too, "though I can't play the girlfriend unless it's about a basketball team or something." (She's 6-3.)

The whole family's in town, but not Ruth. "I have to listen from 3,000 miles away."